How Big is the Solar System?
4/6/2018
Students have been busy learning about space for the past couple of weeks. Our PBL project for this unit is a complete board game that is loosely based on the Game of Life. I plan to share more details about this project in a future blog once the project is done, but I can tell you it is turning out great. The game is called Space Race, and players navigate through a variety of cosmic obstacles and circumstances in order to make it to the end of the race. Students are really finding our PBL project to be incredibly motivating. This project is not only our PBL project, but it is also our class auction project. It will come with a hand-crafted wood case, game markers created in a 3D printer (with assistance from a student), and all of the cards and rules written and designed by students. You can look forward to seeing that at the auction. In order to help students comprehend the varied distances between the planets, we constructed model of the solar system with the planets spaced to scale. We converted astronomical united to inches/feet. The golf ball is Mercury, which of course is the first planet from the sun. For those who may be a little rusty, next comes Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and then we also included Pluto, despite the fact it has been downgraded to a dwarf planet. The student in black in the distance is standing by Pluto. Students are pointing to the planet that they were personally responsible for. During testing week, we followed our popular tradition of playing games in the gym for 20 minutes before beginning testing. We played a variety of games including Salmon/Bear/Mosquito, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and Line Tag. Kids seems to really enjoy having a chance to play with the older kids. Below is a picture of students playing Salmon/Bear/Mosquito. This game works like Rock/Paper/Scissors, where each group of students picks one of the things to be and then runs and tries to tag members of the other team if their character is dominant. Anyway, it was a lot of fun and worked well to get their wiggles out and give them a positive attitude for testing.
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Elizabeth FerryMs. Ferry's experiences include teaching with the Peace Corps in Tanzania, teaching high school English in Maine, and this is her second year at PNA. She loves moose, outdoor activities, and being with her students. Archives
April 2021
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